


Burn in many places

by linaerys



Series: Hell is Empty [2]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Sibling Incest, Space capitalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:54:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3551684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalique inherited a formula from her mother to make Regenex with a lot less killing, but she needs help to remake the Commonwealth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Your brother and your mother, in the same millenium? The House of Abrasax is in trouble, is it not, my dear?” This said to Kalique with a falsely downturned mouth, a touch of fingers to already perfect hair.

“It is a sad time, Lady Doryllis,” said Kalique, scanning the crowd for someone else to talk to. The artificial gravity of this pleasure ship felt slightly strange under her feet. She prefered ground beneath them, one of many things that made her different from the rest of her family.

This room was decorated in a riot of color, heightened by the peacock plumage on the revelers. Kalique had put aside her usual jewel tones for a black that she knew did not suit her. She must show herself to be in mourning.

She spotted a familiar profile, topped by a tower of bright silver hair. “Pardon me, I must greet a friend.” Lady Doryllis gave her an absent smile.

“Lady Ariel,” said Kalique, clasping Ariel’s hands so she couldn’t get away, “so good to see you.” She never thought she would be grateful to see this little sprite again. Kalique had never disliked her personally, but one must oppose those who wanted to marry into the family, on principle.

“Is it really?” asked Ariel, though without much anger. She was a stunning girl, and still managed to look a girl, even after millenia. Kalique made a face. “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Ariel, sounding sincere enough.

The problem with relatively few Entitled, and such long lives, was that these gatherings always felt a little incestuous, even when no actual incest was involved.

“Are you? I always thought things ended badly between you and Balem.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow. “Did he ever end things well?” Kalique had to smile. No, and Ariel was still alive, which was better than many. Then Ariel stiffened. “Hello, Titus.”

He wore not black, but a deep, vibrant blue, that made him look excessively healthy. Kalique thought there was something a little vulgar in his overuse of Regenex. Titus always seemed to be exuding it from his pores.

Titus took one of Ariel’s hands from Kalique’s and kissed it, lingeringly. “Two of my favorite women, together in one place. This evening will not be a total loss.” 

It had been evening on the ship for a few days now, as the it stayed in a low geosynchronous orbit that kept a flaming sunset always in the starboard windows. Kalique pulled Ariel toward her, forcing Titus to let go. Ariel stumbled slightly into her, and Kalique saw a flash of fear on her face. Well, Kalique loved Titus, but he could be as unpleasant as Balem ever was, in his own way. Saving Ariel would be more enjoyable than staying here.

“Titus, so nice to see you, but Ariel and I were just about to leave. She wanted to see my gardens.”

Titus rolled his eyes, and Kalique smiled tolerantly. Cultivating a hobby that Titus found so boring had its uses.

“Stay with me, Ariel,” he said. “I need comforting too.”

“Another time,” said Ariel. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Titus called after them. Ariel’s hand tightened around Kalique’s. 

“Thank you,” she said, once they boarded Kalique’s shuttle. Kalique brought her to her favorite room, filled with plant-like silicon life forms that gave off their own light, and swayed slightly as if in a breeze. Ariel sat on the divan, with Kalique next to her. “Your bro--Titus has been trying to bed me since he first met me.” Which Kalique remembered was not long after Balem first took up with her.

“Yes,” said Kalique. “His competition with Balem was always annoyingly transparent.”

Ariel tilted her head. “Whereas you are pleasingly opaque. What do you want of me, Kalique?”

Kalique smiled. She used the back of her fingers to lift a curl of Ariel’s hair from one side of her shoulder to the other. “What if I wanted the same thing as my brother?”

“I would not object,” said Ariel. “You are charming.” She traced the edge of Kalique’s dress, over her decolletage. “I miss him too sometimes.”

“I don’t want to talk about either of my brothers,” said Kalique. Indeed, they were both too present now. Titus’s cologne still clung to Ariel’s hand, where he had kissed it. And Balem, he rested in her alcazar only a few light years away, recovering from injuries Kalique could hardly bear thinking about. Even with Regenex, it took a long time to regrow missing limbs.

It would be dangerous, bringing Ariel to the same planet as him, but Kalique often worked on instinct that formed later into a plan, and this seemed right. 

She took the hand that Titus had not marked. “Come, let us bathe, and then let us pass the time until we reach my home.”

*  
Balem walked the balconies of Kalique’s world on new made feet. Her home was a place of edges, of cataracts plunging down cliffs, of natural violence shaped and hemmed in by cultivation.

He lingered in a doorway, and saw a fetching scene: Kalique’s head and one hand between the legs of a familiar blonde, her other hand between her own legs. The blonde--Ariel, he remembered--writhed in what looked like true pleasure. Kalique’s naked back was shaped like a violin, and moved as though it played itself. He watched long enough to be annoyed that they did not notice him there, and then moved on, scuffing his feet on the marble. They still did not look up.

When he grew weary of his walking, he summoned a chair to bring him back to the chamber’s Kalique had given him. He supposed he should be grateful. She had not imprisoned him. He could call for outside aid, if he wished. He could read every news feed, access any information from his implant. She could have easily denied him that. 

Yet he delayed finding out anything beyond the extent of his own healing, and his sister’s enjoyments--the last wound he did not want to examine and see how bad it was. Or wasn’t. Kalique seemed the same. Would she be living any differently if the Abrasax stock price had plummeted as much as he feared it had? 

She had provided him with other entertainments with true care: games that he had liked long before she was born, books, and vids, AI companions. Much more than he probably deserved. 

He turned over an ivory game piece between his fingers. She had created something wonderful here. Each breeze carried an enticing fragrance, some warm, most cool and refreshing. She had, perhaps, inherited the most of their mother’s grace.

Death, or near enough, had made him sentimental, and taken some of the sting out of her memory. Kalique was almost certainly caring for him to atone for a sin committed against him or his holdings when he was too injured to do anything about it. She had suborned his bounty hunters and allowed the recurrence to learn enough about herself to claim her inheritance. For that he might well take his revenge. 

But as he fell, it was she who heard him call for help, and sent her drones in to retrieve him, as the refinery fell apart around his broken body. That bought some forgiveness.

He looked up at her footstep, and put down the game piece. She wore a sheer cream robe, loosely belted. Her skin was damp, her expression satisfied.

“You won’t learn anything from her,” said Balem. “She never knew anything of my business.”

She sat down beside him on the couch. “Perhaps I brought her here for you.” She touched his leg lightly, and laughed like bells tinkling.

“And you’re keeping her warm for me? How...hospitable.”

“So suspicious, brother.” She moved away from him slightly. “Perhaps I will marry her. That would be more pleasant for her, in the long run, I think, than marrying you. And we will still get piece of Morningstar’s holdings.”

“Do we need that?” he asked, and wished immediately that he had not. This place, his injuries, he should not have let it prevent him from learning what he needed to know. Kalique played a subtle game, and even now, he did not want to fight her. Why should they not be a _we_ , instead of two at cross-purposes?

“Perhaps,” she said. “Do you truly want to know?” She drew her legs up underneath her, the robe sliding up her thighs, pooling in her lap. In his mind he saw her and Ariel together, and wondered again how planned any of this was. She was their mother’s daughter, as clever and purposeful, and seemingly even more subtle.

“Tell me,” he said. Looked where he was invited to look, at sheer fabric with the dark of her areolas showing through. “What has she done?”

“Nothing yet,” she said. “But she will move soon. She will want to secure her Earth. And, she may want to continue our mother’s last legacy.”

“We could still have her killed,” said Balem.

“So quick to violence,” she said. “The Aegis are watching. Carefully. Captain Tsing would love a chance to take us down.”

He touched her shoulder. She was lovely. This had always been between them, never consummated except once after their mother died, in a haze that he could hardly remember. 

“The Captain can be killed as well. We can afford that.” He said it half as a question. Killing Aegis was expensive. So was killing Entitled. “You should have let me kill the recurrence before.”

Something flickered in her eyes. “You misunderstand me, brother. The only move we can make is to anticipate Jupiter. If she finds the--what is the Earth phrase?--the _cruelty-free_ formula that mother developed, she will destabilize the whole economy. If we do it, we can control it, and reap the benefits.” She leaned in close, and he did as well, echoing her movement before he realized what he was doing, drawing near to her warmth.  
“Is that what you wanted all along?” he asked, his lips brushing her cheek. “Is that why you brought her here, to force my hand?”

She tipped her head to the side. He only breathed upon her neck, and felt her move against him. “Titus got in the way. And then you blundered in,” she said, teasingly, as though the words were an endearment.

“You could have told me.” 

She laughed and pushed him away playfully, and gently, as though she feared his newly-healed body was still fragile. “You...were in no state to hear.”

Did she know? She knew much of what had passed between him and Seraphi. Many of the terrible fights had spilled out into public, and she had spies everywhere. She must at least suspect.

“And now?” he asked. He hated how vulnerable he sounded, but he could always let down his masks with her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I hope you are healed a little.” She stood up, and the robe fell back to her feet. “I must see to our guest.”

“Does she know I’m here?”

Kalique shook her head. “No, but she will. Soon enough.”

He watched her leave, then leaned his head back and watched the red leaves of the trees that bore her name fall through the twilight.


	2. Chapter 2

“Why didn’t you tell me he was still alive?” Titus’s hologram asked.

Kalique tugged her hair over one shoulder. “It wasn’t a secret,” she said. But if Titus truly didn’t know, that meant he didn’t have a spy in her household. He might be pretending not to know; he was occasionally subtle enough for that.

“Is that why you’ve had his estate tied up in probate court?” Titus asked, turning, to wave away a woman walking behind him. Kalique wanted to roll her eyes. Why must he ask questions to which he knew the answers?

“Of course,” she said. She had introduced two additional, conflicting wills, to keep it interesting.

Titus pouted at her. “I wish you’d told me. I wasted a lot of money on that.” Kalique waved that away. “And I suppose you still have Ariel there. I didn’t realize you were acting as our brother’s pimp. I thought you liked me better.”

Heavens preserve her from family jealousy. It was a foolish hope that the death of Seraphi might end this. She rubbed her temples, not minding that her frustration showed. To achieve her plan, she would need for Titus to see her as more than simply a sympathetic ear, the recipient of the least of their mother’s gifts. 

She wished for a moment that she could trust one of them, any of them. The thought of managing both of her brothers, Ariel, Jupiter and whoever she brought into play, for the next thousand years made her feel tired. No wonder Balem’s solution to everything was killing. For now he was weak enough for her to manage easily, but that would not last. He would regain his sharpness soon, and with it his cruelty.

Well, he and Titus could occupy each other. “Right now I have no patience with either of you,” she snapped. “If you had let me handle Jupiter, Abraxas stock would not be in freefall right now.”

Titus pressed his lips together, another version of a pout, this one with less of a pose in it. “My plan would have worked.”

“She had involved the Aegis. And you were going to kill her.”

“I would have made it look like an accident. Paid off whoever asked. It’s been done so many times--I’m surprised to find you squeamish. But then, you never liked to think about where our wealth comes from.”

That was true enough that it stung. She did not like killing. She did not even like it when she could not see it. She had lost herself in her hobbies, a vision of a world made over into beauty, while Balem’s ruthlessness poured more and more wealth into his hands. At least until her mother’s recurrence gave her a chance to alter the balance

“I never like to discard something when it can still be of use,” she said. It had stung too that she only found out Seraphi’s own doubts after her death, sorting through her effects, and the formula that she had only told her sons about. Seraphi had not shared it with the one of her children most likely to understand.

“Hence Ariel,” Titus agreed, pulling her back to the present. Kalique heard a chime from the door behind her, and pressed the key that would open it, to let Ariel in. Titus gave her a sticky smile, then said to Kalique, “Do let me know when Balem tires of her. She must be something special, since she survived their relationship last time.”

“She _is_ good in bed,” said Kalique, and hung up on him.

In the mirror that replaced the hologram image, Kalique watched Ariel come into the room behind her, then drape her arms over Kalique’s shoulders. She kissed the uncovered side of Kalique’s neck, watching herself, until she met Kalique’s eyes in the mirror and lowered her eyelids.

“I was never frightened of him when we were together,” she said. The tension in her body told Kalique that this was a lie, she had been frightened of him, even if she never admitted it to herself. She never used Balem’s name. “But perhaps I should have been. He was different then.” 

Kalique could agree with that. The question was: had he changed again? Ariel could have many uses, bellwether among them.

“Does he know I’m here?” she asked. Kalique thought she detected a little fascination as well as fear. She felt it too. Having Balem here was like having a poisonous snake around her wrist. Alluring and beautiful, but dangerous.

“I’m afraid so, love,” said Kalique. “He’s...recovering.”

“Do you want me to see him?” She met Kalique’s eyes in the mirror again.

Kalique turned and kissed her, deepening the kiss until she felt the tension in Ariel’s body start to melt away. “Not unless you want to.”

*

“I don’t know what she wants yet.” Ariel’s transmission to her father was encrypted, and she was as far as she could easily travel from Kalique’s alcazar, riding a skimmer for an hour to a secluded garden so she could have this conversation. Still, she whispered. This whole planet bent to Kalique’s beautiful whims. She could have ears anywhere.

His voice came back, tinny with distance. “Does her brother know you’re there?”

“Both of them do,” she said. She was pleased to have some news to give him. “Balem is alive. Here.”

A silence. Ariel could picture her father, the great Theodosius Morningstar, touching his beard perhaps, worrying his lower lip with his teeth, thinking out some strategy. The Abrasax children, he had told her, were nothing to Seraphi, and the generations that came before her. They could be bested. It was he who told her that her failure to capture Balem was because of his weakness, not his strength. 

“Then your Kalique is a sentimental fool. She should have killed him, or let him die,” he said eventually.

“So you don’t want me to try to marry her?” Ariel asked. She did not think he was right about Kalique. Ariel was not sure what to make of her, but foolish was hardly the word.

“Has she asked?” 

“I think she would,” said Ariel. Or Ariel could, although it would be gauche for the less wealthy of the two of them to make the offer. Grasping.

“No,” her father said, after a long moment. “That would tie us too closely to them. And if Kalique were to be killed, Balem would find a way to use it against us. Can you set them against each other? That would be far more profitable.”

“I can try,” she said. The wind shifted and sent droplets from a nearby waterfall onto her skin. She shivered as he ended the transmission. 

*

From her office, Kalique watched Balem grow restless. He had garbed himself in black again, disdaining the translucent natural shades of the clothing Kalique provided for him. Kalique smiled, thinking of the indignity he must have felt countermanding, and probably arguing with, the chamber presence until it brought him the clothes he wanted. 

He called up all of his accounts, available Abrasax stock information--through her gateways, though, so no one would know it was him. He was not one to waste an opportunity, and coming back from the dead, even if some had already started to expect it, would be good for something.

He summoned her next, peremptorily, sending a charming butterfly splice trembling to Kalique’s side, to speak a command she knew he had ordered. Kalique put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to calm him after he delivered his message.

Kalique sat back and waited, watching him grow more unsettled as time passed. How long to enjoy this sport, to watch him cross and uncross his legs, drum his fingers on the sofa? He stood and walked out to the balcony and back. 

She gave it a few hours hour, keeping an eye on him while she received an update from Maledicte: Jupiter was following the breadcrumbs Kalique had left on Earth, making contacts with non-tercie inhabitants, who would, in time, guide her to a ship and crew, all of them primed to take down the entire Entitled system, all of them bought and paid for.

After she dismissed Maledicte, she turned to her own reflection. A few adjustments: more gold eyeshadow, tugging the shoulders of her dress down, and she resembled Seraphi as much as she was ever likely to.

Balem’s black covered him up to his chin, and down to his ankles, but his feet were still bare--he had never liked shoes--which made it easy for Kalique to give him a true smile when she entered his chamber. He rose, ever correct, to greet her. 

“Brother, you wanted me?” She inclined her head, felt his gaze on her.

“I had little enough liquid, and you spent it experimenting with mother’s scheme,” he said in his cool, measured whisper. He was putting himself back together, as he was before.

“Yes,” said Kalique, stepping down onto the recessed floor. The gold leaf of her dress tinkled and rustled as she moved, like leaves of the universe’s most precious forest. “I told you, we need to anticipate this.”

“The recurrence will die of old age before it is a problem. She is weak.” Balem steepled his fingers together. He was trying too hard, Kalique decided, attempting to take back everything he had been in one night.

“I don’t think she will,” said Kalique. “I know her. She will be practical.”

“Practical,” Balem shouted. “Practical is killing her.” The effort seemed to tire him, and he sat back down on the cushions. 

“Practical is not fighting one another, when every Entitled is waiting for us to tear each other apart,” she said crisply. She sat next to him. Smiled, tilted her head, waited for a softening in Balem’s eyes. 

“Including a pretty blonde with big eyes?” Balem asked, voice silky now.

Kalique shrugged. “If not her, then her family. Someone like her. Consider her a bellwether.” For all kinds of things.

“And yet you brought her here,” said Balem. “What do we need of her?”

Well. She had dressed like Seraphi for this reason, so she could pull every one of Balem’s strings, to keep him following the path of her choosing.

“Not everything can be work,” she said, pitching her voice low. “I thought you might like to see a familiar face. I thought you might enjoy her.”

“I grew tired of her long ago,” he said. He touched the bare skin of her shoulder. She could feel herself responding, and let it show, let herself blush and catch her breath. Newly replenished bodies reacted so much--no wonder Titus always kept himself so close to his peak. And Balem always had a fascination for her, so much older and more knowledgeable. He was a creature of extremes, who always made her feel dull and staid by comparison. It was heady to make him want her.

But she did not want to change the stakes of the game tonight. Like all counters, this one should be saved until spending it gave her the most benefit.

She gave him a false pout, and kicked at his leg lightly. “I’m sorry to hear that. I will send someone else to you. Any requests? Boy, girl, something else?”

“You decide,” he said. She stood, hearing dismissal in his voice, and walked slowly toward the door.

“Kalique,” he said, as she stood on the threshold to leave. She turned. “Do not imagine that I’ve agreed to your scheme. However much I enjoy your distractions.”

“Of course,” she said, giving him a satisfied smile. Let him think that was for the compliment. He didn’t have to agree. He was still legally presumed dead, and he would have to take up his life again to forbid her use of his accounts, which would give him too many other responsibilities for him to stop her in time.

“Send me something pretty,” he called after her. Kalique considered as she walked around the balcony. The butterfly splice seemed like a good choice, so frightened of Balem already. Yes, Balem would enjoy that, but he would wish he had her instead.


	3. Chapter 3

Nearly a mile of marble hallways, balconies, and bridges separated Ariel’s chambers from Balem’s. Kalique knew every twist and turn of her palace, but not Ariel. She had a sim take her in a skimmer.

Set them against each other, her father had said. She could begin that work in Balem’s bed, though that would not be enough. For all she knew, Kalique wanted her there, had planned this from before the party. Might even join her there. It was not done in Ariel’s family, but incest was not unknown among the Entitled. A source of scandalized gossip, but, over long lifetimes, everyone enjoyed being scandalized. 

The skimmer took a corner too fast and Ariel gripped the edges to avoid being flung off into a cataract. The windows of Balem’s chambers were open to the evening breeze. The lack of security in Kalique’s alcazar had astonished Ariel, until she realized Kalique wanted it that way, wanted intrigue to develop, guided it. After thousands of years of cultivation, of building and refining, this planet was almost an extension of her will.

Balem sat in a cushioned chair draped with swaths of red and purple, inhabiting it like a throne. Before him, a beautiful butterfly splice, with gossamer wings open and quivering, pleasured himself. Balem ignored the spectacle in favor of sheaf on his lap covered with columns of numbers.

Ariel hung back. Other games she might have interrupted, but not this one--Balem did not like to be distracted when he was working. 

If she took the skimmer back to her room, it would be as though she had never come here. Tempting, that. When she had been his paramour, their sex was always fairly bloodless. It was expected that any more complicated tastes would be indulged with others, sims and splices, those who could not question or judge. Even when conducted in private, she had told herself, the joining of two Entitled houses required a dignity that got in the way of true connection. 

All except once. He had said something cutting to her--that she was weak, that she should have stood up to her father more. She was naked, primed and ready from the attentions of sims and stimulators.

She slapped him, and was instantly horrified. She usually skated along the surface with him, did not want to know what swam in the bottomless depths. The look her gave her was more open, and full of real lust, than anything she had seen from him before. He kissed her neck and she grabbed his hair, wrenching his head down, holding him between her legs. 

She came almost immediately, but he went on, and she held him there, with hands and thighs. She hoped he hated it, hoped he could hardly breathe, was writhing in humiliation at what she made him do. He tongued her harder than she liked, pushed his fingers into her, bruising. When she came again, she let him go, and he stood. She had never seen him look like this: hair made wild by her hands, and eyes bright with unshed tears.

He pressed her back against the wall and entered her, and in a few sharp thrusts was done.

She had played more dangerous games with splices, so this shouldn’t have frightened her, but not long after, he pushed her away again, and she let him, returning to her father’s household, and lovers who did not make her feel as though she walked along a cliff, one false step away from disaster.

The butterfly splice finished. Balem looked up and dismissed him with a wave. Ariel took a deep breath and pressed the button for the chamber presence to announce her.

Balem tilted his head to look at her, her expression hardly changing. He did not rise, or observe any other requirements of etiquette. But of course not; they were alone.

“You look well, Lord Balem.” She smoothed the fabric of her petal pink dress over her thighs, letting her nervousness show.

He inclined his chin, but did not return the compliment. 

“If you’re busy--” she began.

“Certainly too busy for one of my sister’s spies,” he said, in his bored half-whisper.

Ariel tossed her hair. “She doesn’t need me to be her spy as long as you’re staying here.” She gestured to indicate the room, the building, the entire planet. “How long will Lord Balem cower in shadows?”

She congratulated herself when she saw the tightening of his jaw. She would please her father in this.

“Is this why you came here?” he asked. “To bait me? Or does my sister not satisfy you? I thought a whore only needed a paying customer.” He stood, and the intensity of his gaze rooted her in place. 

“I don’t want you here,” she said, truthfully. “But if you’d rather stay and give Kalique time to plot against you, that is your choice.” And she turned, in time to feel the warmth of his body as he stepped toward her. To touch her, to hit her, to see if cruel words might be the prelude to crueler sex? No. If this dagger thrust did not work, she had other nights to try again.

She forced herself to take measured steps out to the skimmer, which returned her to her room.

Kalique was waiting there when she arrived. “I wish you hadn’t done that, pet,” she said, with a pout and a smile, to show that she did not blame Ariel, not really. Ariel wished she could believe that, that Kalique could truly have built her own empire from her mother’s inheritance without steel underneath the velvet glove.

“I don’t want him here,” said Ariel. She found she was shaking from the encounter, no need to counterfeit that. “He’s violent and unstable, and…” She went into the arms that Kalique held open, and let Kalique pull her into rest her head on Kalique’s shoulder. 

“I know,” said Kalique, petting her hair. “I know. But…” Ariel nuzzled her face into Kalique’s neck, kissed her there, then her shoulder. Looked up at Kalique with wide, pleading eyes. Keep her here, instinct whispered. If Kalique went to Balem tonight, she would find some way to make him stay, perhaps using the very tools that Ariel was using now. 

“Why do you want him here?” Ariel asked.

Kalique gave her a crooked smile. “To keep an eye on him, of course. Limit the damage.” She lay back as Ariel pressed fingers up between her legs. “Men are so much work.”

Balem was gone the next morning.

*

Chicanery Night bowed, nervously, as he did everything else. “So good to see you alive my lord. We did not think you had survived.”

“No,” said Balem. “Nor I you. How did you survive?”

He hardly listened to the response, which was a convoluted, poorly-executed combination of truth and lies, every circumstance twisted to make Night both victim and hero of his tale. Balem sighed and looked around the audience chamber. Low ceilings, harsh light. This was one of his lesser ships, but at least it was his. 

It had been hard to leave Kalique’s planet. Her soft refusals, her coquetry, all designed to delay him, of course, and he had let her. Wondering long she would let it play out, yielding to the temptation to let any entertainment go on as long as it could, for too soon it would turn to ash.

After Ariel came to him, he submitted the DNA print to reclaim his accounts from there, and ordered a ship sent to him. Not the grand entrance he would have liked to make back into life, or the way he wanted to leave Kalique.

Night was still speaking. Balem held up his hand for silence.

“I want to go over all of my accounts immediately. Put a halt to anything my sister ordered.” Night brought him the sheaves to review. It was nothing he had not learned on Cerise, though Night had more detail. Kalique’s management stanched the bleeding nearly as well as he would have done, but the destruction of the Jupiter refinery, the loss of Earth, and Titus’s Aegis trouble had undermined Abrasax stock. 

He looked back through the news reports Night had flagged, and saw that Kalique had capitalized on that at first, prompting speculators to buy up Regenex and stockpile it, but then other companies, like Morningstar, had begun to bet on Abrasax failure. That boulder was picking up speed now; the more investors believed it, the more the market reflected it, and would make it true.

Kalique’s tinkering, though, conducted by a subsidiary she had spun off before his death--which he could not control--had made a small profit already, selling a new brand, with much larger profit margins than Regenex. He did not like that, any hint that mother’s foolish idea might bear fruit. He could send tax inspectors to shut it down of course, force Kalique to pour her resources into fighting him.

He took the butterfly boy--Hylas--with him when he left Cerise. Planning to use him to send a message to Kalique, whenever he decided that that message should be. 

He missed the days when he could dismiss her, mostly, as someone who was above the family games, content to reap Abrasax profit with as little involvement as possible. But, he was realizing, he had been foolish then. She had not changed at all; she had only shown herself a little more to him in recent months. She still followed her own compass, with grace, charm, and good-nature, and somehow succeeded. She made the prospect of beating her unpleasant, of watching her win, a joy. That was what she had inherited from their mother, a gift of incalculable value.

He decided to let her experiment continue for now. It would take a long time for it to bear fruit, and he had more pressing needs.

“Mr. Night, find me some bounty hunters. Good ones this time. Pay them enough so they don’t defect to either of my siblings.”

“Oh, erm, yes,” said Night. “And who is the target?”

“The recurrence, of course,” said Balem. “Who else?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kalique and Balem both try being villains, and both only partially succeed.

Kalique breakfasted with Maledicte, who told her the news that Balem had gone. She smiled tightly, brought a glass of fruit juice up to her lips. Ariel had worked more quickly than she hoped. Balem was far too easy to manipulate--at least into doing something he wanted to do anyway. 

He would certainly try to have Jupiter killed now. Another attempt would not be the worst thing, if it scared her sufficiently to accept Kalique’s protection, but there was always the chance he would succeed. Then either he would face the Aegis and a long trial that undermined Abrasax stock further, or he would get the Earth back under his control. Neither was ideal.

She called Ariel to her after she changed into a morning gown. “He’s gone,” she said, mournfully, when Ariel arrived. Her white-blonde hair fell over her shoulder in long curls.

She brightened at Kalique’s words. “Then it is just the two of us again. That’s how I wanted it.”

“You don’t understand,” said Kalique. “He’s not well. I fear for what he may do on his own.”

Ariel made a face that said she agreed about that. Kalique met her eyes until she rushed to Kalique’s side a beat too late. 

“What do you think he’ll do?” she asked. Kalique put her hand over Ariel’s where it rested on her shoulder.

“I trust you, Ariel,” said Kalique. “Though not…” She shook her head. Let Ariel read into that what she would. “So many people have betrayed me. I hope you won’t add to their number.”

“What is it?” Ariel asked.

“My mother’s recurrence--she did not die in the refinery with Balem. She’s back on Earth. And now I fear he’s going to try to kill her. He wants Earth back.”

Ariel continued to clasp Kalique to her, but her voice was cool when she asked, “Wouldn’t that be best for Abrasax Industries?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know. She is my mother’s recurrence, her genes reincarnated. Mother--” Kalique gasped, choked back a sob. “I just found her again.” A pause. “No, perhaps you and Balem are right. I am too sentimental. It is better if he succeeds. Thank you.”

Ariel found a way to absent herself an hour later, and made just the call Kalique was hoping. Morningstar would capture Jupiter, make an offer of alliance. Whether Jupiter took it or not didn’t matter. In Morningstar’s control, she would be safe for a little longer. 

*

Ariel woke with a fuzzy head in a chamber that was not her own. The air was still, as it never was on Cerise. She stood. What she’d thought were windows were in fact screens. The decor was spartan, though comfortable. And she was entirely naked.

“Kalique,” she called. A horrifying thought occurred to her--this space reminded her far more of Balem than of his sister. “Balem?”

“No, it is only me,” said Kalique’s voice. She appeared on one of the window screens, wearing a gossamer shift, gathered into a knot beneath her breasts. “You betrayed me quite quickly, my dear. It’s what I hoped for, of course, but I can’t have you making another call until I’m ready. The room you are in is lined with a mesh that will prevent any transmissions. You’ve served your purpose, and now I need you out of the game.”

“Kalique,” Ariel cried out. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Leave you there until I have more use for you, I suppose,” she said. She smiled slightly, self-deprecatingly. “This is so much work. I’d love to let you go, but it doesn’t seem wise at this juncture. I...I’ll send you a non-networked tablet with some entertainment on it. I’m not a monster.”

A sim came with the tablet and a shapeless robe. She left Ariel alone for long enough that Ariel lost track of the time, although she did not run out of strange little diversions on the tablet Kalique prepared.

She slept frequently, and woke from nightmares she could not entirely remember. They involved Balem and Kalique, together, and Ariel at their mercy. Kalique was Balem’s sister--she must have inherited some of his cruelty. Or if not that, she had clearly inherited his capacity for ignoring people. When Ariel woke after a third sleep--long nap, night’s rest, she couldn’t tell, she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes, and why should she? 

“You can’t keep me here against my will. I will see you prosecuted under the Entitled code,” she screamed at the mute walls. She threw the tablet at one of the screens. The screen bowed outward, and the tablet fell to the floor, both unharmed. “Kalique, please. I’m sorry.”

She raged, and fell into an exhausted sleep before Kalique came in person. The door slid open and closed again before Ariel could see what lay outside the door. Kalique wore the same dress as she had in the screen, and Ariel wondered if this had all been one day, stretched out by her own fear. Even the tablet did not have a timekeeper on it.

“An empty threat,” said Kalique. “You came here with me. It would be your word against mine.” She shrugged. “And if you won such a suit, I would pay. It is nothing to me.”

“What do you want from me?” Ariel asked. She had ripped the neck of the shift, and now she tugged it down so it exposed her shoulder. She felt small and grubby standing before Kalique in her shining dress.

“I told you,” said Kalique. “I need you off the board for a little while.”

“I thought I was more to you than a counter in a game,” said Ariel, trying to sound more hurt than desperate.

“Of course you are,” said Kalique. 

“If you care about me at all, you’ll let me out of here. What can I do?” She bit her bottom lip, hoping it was seductive. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“Oh, my dear, haven’t you realized by now how dull my tastes are?” Kalique said. “You should have gone with Titus if you wanted this kind of game.”

“You’re a very good liar, Kalique,” said Ariel, looking directly at her, dropping the flirtation. “I almost believe you. But I know what you wanted. You wanted to fuck the woman your brother had. You wanted to join us both in bed.”

This time Kalique’s smile seemed thinner. “I don’t like to share.”

“Who don’t you want to share? Me or him? Now that your mother is gone, I was your only competition.”

“Now you do misread me,” said Kalique. “You were never competition.” She did not deny that her mother had been, Ariel noted--ammunition for later. Kalique turned to leave, her thumb on the button that would recognize her DNA and free her.

“Then what do you want?” Ariel asked. “Do you want to know what he was like in bed?” Kalique looked back. “He was dull. Beautiful but dull.”

“Then why would I want to know?” Kalique asked.

“Because you hope he’ll be different with you,” Ariel offered. She barely knew what she was saying now, only that she needed to keep Kalique here, to drive away the horrors of solitude. Kalique’s face reacted slightly to that. She wanted to say something. Ariel continued. “He liked to be humiliated, I think,” she said. Too uncertain. She had lost her momentum.

“What makes you think you’re telling me anything I don’t know?” Kalique asked.

“Please, what can I do?” Ariel asked, dropping any pretense. “Please.”

Kalique tilted her head, and gazed into the distance. “I’ve always rather liked being worshipped.” She looked back down at Ariel. “I prefer it to be voluntary, though.”

“It is,” said Ariel, desperately. What use was a captor who wanted nothing from her? She threw herself at Kalique’s feet. “You are so beautiful.”

Kalique hesitated, and Ariel thought for a moment that her transparent begging was working, but Kalique’s eyes were abstracted. In a moment she touched her implant, and smiled to herself. She inclined her chin toward Ariel.

“Don’t fret, my dear. I will let you out soon,” she said, and turned to go.

*

“Kalique.” She heard Balem’s voice through her implant--she’d set the recorder implanted in the butterfly boy’s skin to alert her when they heard Balem’s voice, and they had.

“Kalique,” he said. “I know you’re listening. Or you will be.”

Kalique smiled as she walked through the halls back to her room. Balem could have used Hylas better, fed her misinformation through him, but he wanted this more, it seemed.

As soon as she had privacy, she called up the visual from the implant as well. The recorder was in the boy’s neck, disguised along a seam of pigmentation, the verdant colors that his genetic splicing gave him, but a scan would have found it. The recorder showed a chamber Kalique did not recognize, though it had Balem’s stamp on it, in its dark colors, recessed lights, glistening floors and matte walls. 

“My name is Hylas,” said the boy. The sound echoed in Kalique head, as though she were the one speaking. Balem regarded him coolly. “Or whatever you want it to be.”

“Don’t speak,” said Balem, holding up a hand. His eyes changed; now he was looking through Hylas at her. “Kalique, what did you want me to do with this toy? You can’t have imagined you’d learn anything from him.”

“I already have, brother,” Kalique whispered, light years away. 

“What do you want to see?” he asked. He looked the boy up and down, eyes sad. “I thought you were my friend. But you are working with _her_.” He drew closer. The image jumped, as if the boy flinched. “I saw what you’re doing on Cybele 4. Mother’s formula.” Kalique sat up straight. “It works. Do you know what it means, though? They all have to give samples voluntarily, at least a part of the seed population, to get enough information to extrapolate the formula. You haven’t thought it through, have you?”

“I have,” said Kalique. Though she had brushed off some of the larger problems, it was true. Set the plan in motion, then deal with the consequences--it usually worked well enough for her. 

The boy breathed shallowly, and Balem’s face moved as if was underwater. It made Kalique feel dizzy and ill. 

“The Commonwealth works,” said Balem, “because everyone is part of it. Except the harvests. They are outside the system, and your plan would bring them into it. Are you prepared for that? They will want rights...privileges. Our privileges.” He was very close to the recorder. “And there are so many of them on earth. So much wealth.”

The dark fabric of Balem’s collar blocked out most of the visuals now, so she could only hear his voice. “Are you ready to start _caring_? As mother cared? That is what killed her.”

He stepped back. His eyes were lambent in the low lights. “Do you care about this boy? You didn’t expect him to come back alive, did you?” A sickly smile. “I have a reputation. So do you. Close your eyes, Kalique, if you don’t want to see.”

The boy’s heartbeat made a counterpoint with Balem’s voice, a thud that Kalique’s beat along with. He was right, she didn’t want to see--she had closed her eyes for a long time. She would have continued to, through a long lifetime, without her mother’s push.

“You should _see_ , but I don’t want you to see either. You _should_.” Balem’s hands were on the boy’s throat, Kalique thought; flashes of light and shadow where all that showed on the recorder. Kalique closed her eyes. “But no. I will send him back. Mostly untouched.”

A thumb and forefinger closed over the recorder. An electronic shriek mixed with the boy’s, and then sound cut off as well.


	5. Chapter 5

Kalique found it less strange to see Jupiter this time. She was on board Theodosius Morningstar’s clipper, a fantastical ship that rivaled Balem’s before it was destroyed. Kalique recalled that Balem had been annoyed when Theodosius purchased the larger one. The Morningstar family was a fierce competitor in the market, and in everything else.

Theodosius had given Jupiter and her entourage a suite of interconnected rooms. She stood to greet Kalique, holding herself with a vibrating wariness.

Kalique had let Ariel buy her freedom by setting up this meeting. Now Kalique’s small in-system yacht docked in the bay of Theodosius’s monstrosity. She had put herself in the hands of would-be enemies for this. 

She smoothed out the skirt of her dress, and wondered if these feelings were nervousness, or a reaction to being in the presence of one who looked so much like the mother she had loved and feared and hated.

"Jupiter, it is lovely to see you again," she said, reaching her hands forward to clasp Jupiter's hands. Jupiter did not resist the touch, but her face was hard.

"Lady Kalique," said Jupiter, inclining her head. "Why are you here?"

"To finish what I began before--I want you for an ally, of course,” said Kalique. Her wolf-splice's eyes flashed up. He and Jupiter shared a glance.

"Why should I be your ally? You wanted me to ignore--to 'close my eyes'." Jupiter had many unconscious mannerisms that were just like Seraphi, but also a low sharpness that Kalique found herself liking far more than she had liked her mother, who had always seemed like a distant goddess. Kalique had never been the favored child. She was not sure what her mother had been thinking, having a daughter. 

Had she and Balem already begun fighting when she thought perhaps a daughter would be less trouble? She and Balem had been together, the dual star at the center of the Abrasax system for so long, when it had soured, perhaps Seraphi thought that she needed a girl child to balance it.

With her genetic designers, she had given Kalique half of her genes, and purposely chosen others that would make her daughter less beautiful. Kalique had minded for centuries that her mother had written these flaws into her flesh. She was charming, pretty even, but without the beauty that stopped hearts--beauty she had given to Titus in excess, so much that he looked over-designed.

She realized she was staring at Jupiter again, and Jupiter back at her.

"I still want to be your ally," said Kalique. "But let us speak in private. On my ship." Jupiter’s splice visibly bristled at that. "Your people can come, of course. Or we can speak on your ship. Just...not here."

Kalique turned, and heard the clomp of military boots behind her as they followed her through the corridor, down in a transport pod and across the the ship bay into Kalique’s yacht. 

"If you have any listening devices for your own use, please remove them now," said Kalique. A sim proffered a bucket, into which went small metal objects. Then she led them through a portal that would check for bugs and beacons and disable them. She took them to her favorite room, also recently swept for bugs.

"You said all I had to do was close my eyes," said Jupiter again. She wore, Kalique noticed, a very simple outfit, though not of Earth make. Near a twin to what her splice wore. An outfit meant for war, for combat, not for beauty.

Kalique swept the silver train of her dress after her and let it swirl around her feet. She was what she was.

"But you did not close your eyes," she said, walking toward Jupiter. "And now I know you are worthy to learn of my mother's last gift to her children. My brother refused it and--"

"--he killed her," said Jupiter. She met Kalique's eyes. Her voice had a hard edge in it, but there was something yearning about her. A piece of her desired connection with Kalique. She had thought about this, about Kalique losing a mother, and finding out her brother had done it, and felt sympathy. 

Kalique sat heavily down on a divan. Let Jupiter see that this hurt her. It was one thing to think it, even to heard it mentioned in rumors, but another to hear it spoken baldly by Jupiter, as pure fact.

"Yes," said Kalique, her voice thick and dull. "And Titus twisted up lies with truth to try to steal your inheritance and your life. I know." 

Jupiter glanced at her wolf-splice, at the other splices gathered around her. “Give us some privacy,” she said. One-by-one they left, until only the wolf was left. He whispered something in Jupiter’s ear, kissed her temple, and gave Kalique a baleful look. Then he left as well.

"My mother loved me least,” said Kalique, looking up at Jupiter, “but she gave this gift to all of us, and I am the one who will take it. She gave me the tools, a plan and a formula, to create a synthetic Regenex that will not require the harvesting, the death of whole populations, that made my family wealthy. At the end of her life she wanted to change the universe. And so do I."

Jupiter looked suspicious. Kalique had planned to do this better, to spin a fantasy of justice and equality with charm. 

“Why should I believe you?” she asked. She crossed her arms. “How do I know this isn’t a ploy to get Earth for yourself?”

“You don’t know,” said Kalique. “You also don’t know the lifetimes that I have spent insulating myself from the reality of harvest. I closed my eyes. But you did not, and I knew that my mother’s last wish had been passed on to you. I know, this sounds like silly spirituality, or sentimentalism, but what clearer sign could i want?”

"What do you need me for?" Jupiter asked. Now she only held her arms loosely around herself, no longer quite as closed.

"I need Earth,” said Kalique. “It has the most genetic diversity, and the population is has bred out its early seeding. If we sample, say, a million people from each populated continent, that will give the formula enough variation to extrapolate the gene sequences for...well it gets technical, but my mother's geneticist figured out how to extrapolate genomic varieties and clone the stem cell cultures at a much higher rate. It creates Regenex--or however we brand it--at a fraction of the cost. Monetary and human."

"And by sample, you mean...?" Jupiter said, narrowing her eyes.

"We will need to take some tissue samples. I--you are the Queen of Earth. You know better than anyone the culture, and how this may be done. It will require vast organization."

"But not killing."

Kalique shrugged. "That is the easiest. And still, 6 million against your billions."

"6 million," said Jupiter. A shudder crept over her shoulders. "That is--well, why would you know?" Her splice put a hand on her arm. "I don't care if it's the easiest. It's not happening. What is the other option?"

"Tissue samples. A bit painful, perhaps, but they will survive, and heal. But it is much more difficult to manage."

"You can make people forget." Jupiter’s voice was accusatory.

"Not at that volume, with what we will need to do."

"What about the egg banks, blood banks...?"

"Balem knows more about how your Earth genetic industry works, but no, it has to be dura mater and bone marrow samples. Not easily done."

"And if I don't?"

Kalique spread her hands. "Earth is yours. You can do what you want. You could still be wealthy without ever touching it, if you mortgaged against it. Of course, whoever held the mortgage would get it when you died, but you could extend your life for a long time. There are always ways, if you don't care."

"I care," said Jupiter. "I need to think about this. And I still don't trust you."

"Of course not," said Kalique. 

“How would you do it--I’m not...I mean, I can’t just take control of Earth. I’m just--I clean houses.”

“Easily,” said Kalique. “We’ve--I’ve done it before.” Constantinople, a thousand years earlier. She and Balem had taken a vacation playing at royalty. “The only resource that has any worth to the truly wealthy is time. But on your planet, there are other forms of wealth. Gold--platinum? Nuclear isotopes are a little harder to trade in for women on your misogynistic planet, I think, but that could work.” She saw Jupiter starting to catch on. “I will provide the material. You and your followers set yourselves up somewhere remote, where gold buys legitimacy. Spend it freely, turn your purchased power into real power. You’ll need time, protection, and capital, all of which I can provide. You can do it if you have the will. Do you?”

Jupiter nodded, firm and certain, and Kalique believed her. The woman who would let her family die to save a future she might not live to see would do what it took.

“I still don’t trust you,” said Jupiter. “I want a...show of good faith. Do--whatever you would do to give me that power on Earth, no strings attached, if it is so easy for you, and I will think about it.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Kalique. It would be easy. She could wait until Jupiter began to grow old, if she had to. Then Jupiter would want the Regenex to buy more time to save her planet. And she would agree.

The proximity alarm sounded, and suddenly her chamber was full of milling splices, all talking in low tones. Kalique called up a visual of the approaching ship. She knew before her yacht’s AI identified it. Hulking, brutal curves, sinuous wings--this was one of Balem's ships. 

"He will kill you," said Kalique. "I manipulated Ariel and her family into saving you, and they will want to do that still. Go back to your ship. I will make Balem's diagnostics think you are on board, and he will capture me."

Jupiter hesitated. "Will you be safe?"

“Don’t tell the Morningstars anything we’ve discussed. They would kill both of us if they knew. Go.”

The wolf-splice put his arm around Jupiter’s shoulder and started to pull her from the room. “But are you safe?” she asked again.

Kalique raised her chin. "He won't hurt me." She said. She wanted to add: I'm his sister, but knew that it would not be convincing. Not to Jupiter.

"Why are you doing this?" Jupiter asked.

"Many reasons," said Kalique. "Some good, some selfish. Now go."

She had Jupiter and her splice's body-print. It would be easy enough to fake their presence. As soon as Jupiter and her entourage left the ship, she ordered her pilot to take off, but linger in the open bay. Balem would imagine that she intended to flee, with Jupiter, at the last moment, and not follow Morningstar across the galaxy. 

She forced herself sit and wait, to be perfectly refined and ready when he boarded her yacht, or, probably, sent his lizard-men to take her. She clothed in pink and silver, her dress decorated with nacreous shells, moulded over her body, beautiful armor. 

The yacht jolted as its acceleration was overtaken by the tractor beam from Balem's ship. A long wait, then the clank of metal on metal. Would he ask permission to come aboard? It depended on how angry he was. 

He did not ask permission, but he came himself, flanked by his guards. His face was closed down, eyes opaque. He moved with swift purpose, seeming younger and more awake now than the languid prince he had been before his near-death.

He should thank Jupiter for that, Kalique thought, watching him through the cameras on board her yacht, watching his creatures search. Their scanners were much more accurate than remote ship-mounted scanners. They would know she had lied. 

Soon enough, Balem keyed an override that opened her door, and swept in, black cape swirling behind him. 

"She’s not here," he said, volume rising with every word.

"No," said Kalique. "She went with Morningstar." 

Balem paced the floor. Kalique folded her hands in her lap. 

"She means to make a deal with them? A deal she would not make with me? No, sister, do not lie to me, even by implication. You have given her your pitch--your better world. I need to know if she took it or not. Tell me."

Kalique took a deep breath and stood. Balem's track took him close to her. He grabbed her chin and wrenched it up so she had to look at him. He stared at her, face trembling with fury, as though he could see the secrets written under her skin, if only he looked hard enough.

"If I am killed for any reason, the formula will be broadcast to the entire universe," said Kalique, meeting his eyes with some difficulty. She did not like to see either the accusation or the pain in them. "I have put all my fortune into making sure it gets out. So I am worth more to you alive, if that is your question.”

"Do you hate me so much?" A vulnerable question asked with an unreadable voice and expression. Kalique put her hands up to his wrist where he still held her face, exerting soft pressure until he let her go.

"I don't hate you at all,” she said, holding his hand in hers. 

He wrenched himself free. "I think that if you don't now, soon you will," he said. He ordered his guards to bring her onto his ship.

“I can walk,” she told them, but one of the lizards slung her over his shoulder. Balem never turned back to look.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you were waiting to try reading this until there was actual Kalique/Balem...well there is a little bit here, and more to come.

Balem gave her a fine set of chambers, draped in grays and the lightest of pastels--probably as close as the ship afforded to a room where she would be comfortable. She wondered if this had once been Ariel’s rooms.

That would be entirely fitting: for her to be trapped in Ariel’s rooms now. Did Balem know that she had kept Ariel confined, put Kalique here on purpose? No, he could not, and if he did he would not care. She could invoke tax code against him, but as with Ariel, he would not care about that either. What she planned to do would upset the entire Commonwealth--if any of the other Entitled were to learn of it, they would support any punishment.

She took a deep breath and walked the margins of her cell. The bathroom had a deep, recessed bath, in black, iridescent tiles, more to Balem’s taste than the rest of the suite. This must have indeed been Ariel’s chambers when they had flirted with alliance, those centuries ago. Kalique did not like that. If Balem came to see her here, how could he help but be reminded of another woman. A lesser woman.

Anywhere else, though, might remind him of Seraphi, and that would be worse. She opened the mirrored cabinets and found shelves stocked with every stimulant, relaxant, or hallucinogen a guest could want, though of course she would not--she needed her wits about her. Another drawer contained hand-held sex toys--all in unopened packaging--for those who preferred more personalized control than pre-programmed sims. 

She tried not to think about who had placed them there and why. Back in the main living area, she called up the chamber presence, and found that the drapings could be moved, and colors changed, at her whim. Red, then, for Cerise, with some leaf-greens and turquoises. Sand-colored floors, as well, to mimic her warm marble.

She could also order any food at the press of a button, sim companions of various sizes, shapes, and personality options. No link to the outside, of course, but this was still far more generous than she had been to Ariel. Blood was worth something.

Kalique pressed a button that pulled back drapes to reveal a huge window looking out into space. Passing beside them, light years away but looking close enough to touch, was a huge nebula studded with stars. As she watched, two bright asteroids collided, sending a halo of glowing debris through the darker clouds. Such sights could make even an Abrasax Primary feel small. Kalique touched another button, which replaced the star field with a projection of a placid lake. 

Still, she knew the stars were out there, and after a moment, returned to that view. 

She kept herself occupied for a few cycles, first exploring every aspect of the rooms, all the buttons, which doors opened and which stayed shut. She made sure a few things that could be used as weapons were within grabbing distance, just in case. She did not intend to die here, nor did she intend for the solitude to weaken her, as it had Ariel. She had patience; perhaps that was another inheritance from Seraphi. Her plan would unfold over centuries, millenia, even. It would take time for Jupiter to make Earth into a place that would supply the necessary genetic samples.

If Balem wanted Jupiter dead, all he had to do was call up Theodosius Morningstar and tell him with Kalique intended. Perhaps that was what he was doing now, but Kalique thought not. The instinct to protect family against outsiders ran strong, even when they fought amongst themselves. 

She was napping when he came to her, the room dim, lit by a few recessed lights and the vast starfield in the window.

He entered without permission, alone, and sat on one of the low couches looking out at it. In profile, all she could see was silhouette: his haughty mouth, hair swept back from his forehead. He drummed his fingers on the upholstery making a low thrum hardly louder than the ship’s engines.

She sat up. She was wearing a sheer peignoir, provided by the chamber. She did not like its vulnerability, but that would probably work to her advantage. She stood and touched a switch that illuminated the room with a little more warmth, but not much light.

She fixed her hair by feel, gathering the curls into a low knot with a long teak hairpin, one of a few styles she could do for herself, even with him watching her.

“I want Earth back,” he said flatly. “You’ve flushed Jupiter out. You have a plan she will listen to. Tell her she can only have mother’s formula if she signs Earth over to you.”

Perhaps she could get Balem to transfer the gold she had promised Jupiter, by following this suggestion, but she balked at outright deceiving him. Subterfuge, moving more quickly, more cleverly than him, that was allowed in their game, but not outright lying and betrayal. Even murder was preferable.

She smiled at him, a sweet, patient smile, and shook her head. “No.”

After so long spent with his lizards, he moved like them sometimes, slow and deliberate until a moment of blinding swiftness. He stood, and slapped her right after the word left her lips.

Then the reptile swiftness was replaced with human shock. He pulled his hand away and looked at it, as if horrified by what he’d done. There was something wild in his eyes that she didn’t like. Jupiter had been sure that Balem had killed Seraphi. No one knew the depth of what lay between them, what history written in blood, over thousands of years when they were Abrasax in its entirety. Kalique did not want to know more than she did.

She touched her cheek. It felt hot, reddening.

“You want to punish me because you cannot punish Jupiter?” Kalique said. Because you cannot punish mother.

“The Earth was mine,” he said, trembling. “Mine.”

Kalique sat down before the vanity and looked at herself in the mirror. There would be a bruise, and she would do nothing to make it fade. Let Balem see what he had done. He walked behind her, a dark wraith against the swaths of pale fabric that adorned the walls. She must make him touch her again, she knew, and not in anger in anger this time. 

“It is easy for ones as old as we to live in the past,” she said, as if to herself. She pulled out a loose curl and let it drape over one shoulder, a silky wave caressing fine new skin, a pleasure she would never tire of. “But the universe moves on. You want Earth back-- _this_ is how it will happen, or at least how some of the profit will flow to us again.”

Balem’s pacing quickened. “Why do you cling to this foolish idea?”

Kalique regarded herself in the mirror again. Not the beauty that her mother was, she still had fine straight brows, arresting eyes. She had a long time to become accustomed to herself. 

“I see I am only making you angry,” she said, even and calm. “What shall we talk about instead?” When he did not respond she added. “Of late there has been nothing for you--nothing but business. I at least have my games and my gardens.” She met his eyes in the mirror. “I was remembering Constantinople.”

“Barbaric,” said Balem, with a hint of a smile. 

“It was a vacation.”

“Their little games. Such small stakes.”

“Big enough. We were king and queen,” she said, and let the suggestion linger.

Balem came up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders, molding long fingers over her skin. Now she couldn’t see his face in the mirror, only long lines of crystal-dusted black. 

“We are going to your little planet, Kalique, and I am going to shut your operation down. You will be queen of nothing.”

With that, he turned and left, without giving her the courtesy of a farewell. She sighed and pulled loose her hairpin. Her cheek was beginning to swell and purple. She was going to have to work at this. She should have done whatever it took to keep him on Cerise. Pride had stopped her, the fear that consummating centuries of this strange flirtation would only end in a short, unsatisfying dalliance. 

Yet they had once, before, a moment so strange it seemed plucked out of time, as though it might not even have happened. It had been after their mother’s death--his man Night called her, said she had to come. Balem was not himself. Kalique had never liked Night, but he was loyal, it was bred into him with his rat features and rat cleverness.

Balem was in a room on his ship, done in the grays he had favored before Seraphi’s death painted everything Balem owned with black. He was disheveled, red eyed, curled up around a couch cushion. When Kalique came and sat by him, he pulled away from her touch for a moment, before clinging to her, as though she were the one thousands of years older. 

She pulled his head to hers and rested it on her shoulder, stroking his hair. She had comforted him like this before, when they were much younger. Always over Seraphi, who could play with his emotions as no one else could. No lovers had ever touched him, but Seraphi had a hook in him that went through all of his defenses. And now she was gone. 

Then, Kalique did not know that Balem had done it, but the depth of his pain seemed equal with the loss. And now? She did not blame him, whatever the reason. She had thought about killing Seraphi herself many times, as Seraphi had engineered the death of her own father to inherit the Abrasax fortune, but stopped with thought, because the next image that followed was that of Balem’s pain. She would not do that to him. 

He sobbed on her shoulder until he was spent, and Kalique ran out of soothing nothings to murmur. When his tears subsided he looked up at her. She smoothed back his hair, and kissed his forehead. He took her hands and kissed her on the mouth, not as a brother or as a lover, but as though driven by some kind of compulsion. Kalique had watched herself, passive, for a moment, before being caught up in it as well, this storm of grief that cried for some release, that became a need to have him as close to her as possible, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, ending with him inside of her. She hardly knew how it had come to this, and later could remember neither pleasure nor pain, only a bone-deep need that had driven her.

When they were done they slept, weary and drained. She woke, clothed by the chamber presence, and he was gone.

She saw him again at the public funeral, his grays traded for black. He kissed her cheek, coolly, accepted barbs from Titus without remark.

He had killed and died, come through fire for his sins. The journey to her new refinery would take a long time to reach. He would visit her again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is fighting and fucking and I have to raise the rating to explicit.

Kalique had only one visit to base it on, but it seemed that Balem liked to visit her when she was asleep. Perhaps he thought it would make her more malleable. If he thought to convince her to change her mind, he had misjudged where his strengths lay. He had always been the direct one, taking what he wanted when he wanted it. He had enough strategy, in business at least, to know what he wanted, and grasp it before anyone else realized they wanted it, so the financial feeds praised him for his subtlety. They were wrong.

He had, she assumed, video into her room. So let him watch this. She read a tablet for a few minutes, then paced across the room, then back to her table to read. She repeated this a few more times, then, finally went into the bathroom and weighed a pouch that contained a Dreamtime tablet in her hands. 

A silvery pill, decorated with a seam of blue. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She wished she could take it for real. it brought sleep, with pleasant dreams, but only as much as the body needed, and provided a lovely floating sensation that lasted for hours afterward. A body and mind under its influence were suspended in a state of pleasantness, willing to agree to anything.

She had used it with lovers before; it leant a timeless, endless quality to lovemaking. If she had other ambitions, she would take it now, to pass the time, to welcome Balem into her arms when he visited next. 

She palmed the pill, and slid it into mouth then tongued it to the side, then removed it again as she brushed her hair. She smiled to herself, changed into another nightgown, and laid down on the bed. It was the ship's night time, a few hours before when Balem had visited her before, though it would be hours before she truly wanted to sleep.

Still, sleep had been coming easily in this confinement. She grew slack and bored, beset by a mental torpor that frightened her. Long-lived Entitled suffered it sometimes. The body might be convinced to live forever, but the mind calcified. 

No, Kalique would escape that, by making over the system that ran the universe into something new. That would occupy her mind.

The sheets were soft, and she did indeed drift for a while, watching the star field, the strange blurs and jumps that faster-than-light travel caused. It was hypnotizing.

She had fallen truly asleep by the time she heard the door to her chamber open. As she slid toward wakefulness, she remembered her plan, and stayed still in her bed, feeling the change in the air, as the steel smell of the corridor rushed in. 

Balem left the lights off. He walked over to the bed, hardly making a sound except the sigh of fabric. She kept her eyes closed and waited through a long silence while he did not move--watching her, watching the stars, reaching out with a garotte? She concentrated on breathing quiet and deep, as though in true sleep. 

Then she heard him move, and felt the weight of the bed shift as sank down onto it. She opened her eyes slowly, stretched, let the sheets slide down and pool around her waist.

"Balem," she said. "I remember when you used to pride yourself on politeness." A hint of annoyance--a sister's right--though she should still pretend she was under the influence of the Dreamtime. No sharpness. More languidly, she asked, "Can't you sleep?"

"I don't like pills," he said. He lay back against her pillows, though, and looked up at the ceiling, which was studded with tiny crystals. He wore a lounging outfit, chest bare, arms covered with sleeves that joined in a cape. She remembered when he had dressed in color, a long time ago. At least he had not lost his taste for flamboyant attire, even if all the color was gone.

"Sometimes an altered consciousness is all that makes life bearable," said Kalique. She curled on her side, head still on the pillow, touched her toes to his bare ankle. "It is not so different. Only softer. I'll get one for you."

"No," he said. Kalique looked at his profile, the angled cheekbones, the permanent pout. It was said he looked like Seraphi’s only husband, who had betrayed her and died for it, long before Kalique was born.

"Why did you come here then?" she asked. She leaned up on one arm, and walked her fingers up the pale skin of his waist. "You didn't have to imprison me for this." 

He took her fingers, and touched them to his lips. She caressed his cheek, tugged him down to kiss her, lightly at first, then soft and open. It felt like she had taken the Dreamtime, floating here in the permanent night of space. She preferred to be planet-side, but there was something appealing about this. When she had taken Dreamtime before, she could kiss a lover forever, lost in the slide of lips on skin.

This moment seemed wholly separate from anything else, the struggle over Earth, almost as though it were an inevitability that must be passed before resuming their fight. Perhaps Balem thought it would be easier to bring her to heel after this. Or he was tired, and couldn’t sleep, and sought the one person alive who might comfort him.

She dragged her lips over the clean line of his jaw, so taut and freshly regenerated. Then a collar of titanium and jewels, hard and uncomfortable. If he wore that to sleep...she trailed a finger lightly over it and he tensed. Seraphi had been strangled, and since then, Kalique had never seen him with his neck uncovered, except when he was regenerating from his injuries. As soon as he was well enough to choose his clothes, he picked those with high necks.

Let him keep it for now. He had bared other parts for her. He responded to her lips and fingers, all correct, pulling her toward him, but somehow cool. With anyone else, Kalique would have withdrawn, but she had decided on this path and had to walk it to its end. 

Rumors persisted about Balem--Ariel said he was dull in bed; other rumors had him more depraved than Titus. He killed his lovers, he only fucked sims, or his Sargorn guards, or his mother. That last was certainly true, though that side of their relationship had ended before Kalique’s birth.

His loose trousers were easily disposed of. He pulled the ties of her nightgown so it fell away and off her. He was hard in her palm, and when she eased down around him, but there was still something bloodless about this. She had hardly begun to move when he brought a hand up to her face, and held her chin, somewhat awkwardly. She stilled.

He looked at her as though he was searching for something, then let his hand fall. "She was far more beautiful than you,” he said. “More clever. More everything.”

It hurt like a punch, and made her gasp and draw back. He put his hands on her hips, holding her in place. Now he thrust up to meet her, as though insulting her was a spur to his desire. Perhaps it was. 

“But you killed her,” said Kalique. She wrenched out of his grip and fell back onto the floor. “You loved her, and you hated her, and you hate my plan because it was hers. And you want to hurt me because I am not her.”

She stood and wrapped a robe around her, hating how sheer it was. She wanted armor, scales, weapons. She would kill him. She could, here, and all his servants would be hers. His planets--she soothed her anger with calculation. No, she needed him alive. She knew his true will, from when he was thought dead earlier; no Abrasax would be foolish enough to make his siblings his beneficiaries.

He glared at her, and pulled a sheet across his lap. He would not deny it. He might leave the room, but she did not think he could force the voice that had been choked since her death to lie about it.

“I do not blame you,” she said. Not for that, anyway. “Ancestors know she made me angry enough sometimes--”

“You do not know.” His voice was a rasp, a rusty file, a vibrating saw-blade. “You cannot know.”

“So tell me," she said. 

He sat up, facing away from her, out at the star field. Kalique sat down behind him, close enough he must feel her there. She looked at the curve of his back, hating him as much as she loved him. She must be the mother Seraphi never was, always comforting, never comforted. 

“You are dying of it,” she said. She reached out to touch him, but pulled away. She could forgive him Seraphi’s death, but not his insults. “You almost died of it on Jupiter, and you are dying of it now. Come, tell me. Was it one of your fights?”

He nodded.

“About...?”

“Yes,” he said. He turned back toward her. Eyes bright and reddened, chin up. “She wanted to remake the universe. To be a benevolent goddess. After everything she taught me. Taught us. She called me selfish.” He touched Kalique’s shoulder, and drew a finger across her skin, almost caressing, then up to her neck. “I took the nearest thing to me and I hit her, and then I choked her.”

His hand tightened around her throat.”And she told me to do it. She told me if I would not help her change--everything--she would rather be dead. She said she hated her life. Do you hate your life Kalique?” His eyes were wild.

Could she break his grip? Could she fight him off? He frightened her like this. He always supervised his own harvests. He was an executioner, giving life and taking it. Perhaps her anger would not be enough against him. She could move a hand, she could raise it to his face, but she feared to do it, feared to make the same gesture _she_ had.

“You are not as beautiful as her. You will never be her,” he whispered.

“Are you going to kill me?” Kalique spat. “Do it then. Even if you do, I’ve won. I am better than her, sainted mother. You could never get out from under her heel, and now you’re under mine, whether you realize it or not.” Her anger gave her strength. She shoved him away, and sent him sprawling naked on the floor. 

“I am better than our mother. She let it kill her. She let what we do eat her up inside. She wanted to change it, but she didn’t have the will. She didn’t want to do it if it would hurt her precious boy. She’d rather destroy you, by making her kill you, than do what had to be done.”

She stood over him. “I am going to do what needs to be done, though. I am going to do it because I am better than her, and better than you. I am going to remake the universe, and redeem our family’s name. It’s what Mother wanted, and she had it within her grasp, but was too much of a coward to take.”

He stayed on the floor, looking up at her. He looked hungry for her, as he had not been before.

“I’m not going to kill you. You’re--” a twisted smile “--family.”

“That doesn’t help much, with us,” she said. He reached out clumsily, took her hand and pressed it to his lips. 

“What do you want, Balem?” she asked coldly, pulling it away.

“I want you," he whispered. "Make me. Make me do whatever you want.” He was looking up at her.

“I’m not her,” she said. “I don’t want to be her.”

“Kalique," he said softly. "You're right. You’re better." Words she wanted to hear, even if they were more manipulation.

“Fine, show me.” His eyes widened, in hope, perhaps. She had not seen that expression on him in more years than she could count. “Those toys in my bathroom. You put them there. I want to see you fuck yourself. I want to watch.” He wanted anger in her voice, so let him hear it now: thousands of years of being the lesser sibling, the sister, not as clever or beautiful. Let him regret being wrong.

She stared at him, and for a long moment it seemed he would not do it. Then he stood and went. Head bowed, looking cowed. She’d wanted his approval for so long, but this was not something she could keep up for long. Whatever bound them together might no more survive this than they would survive his coldness.

He returned with a curve of silver. He met Kalique’s eyes again, daring her back down. She knew if she faltered at all, she’d lose more than the power she had here in this room. She felt like it was her will animating him, pushing him along. 

"Wait," she said. "Sit." She walked up toward him, stood between his legs. She touched his hair, fine and thick, then moved her hands to the back of his collar, fingering the heavy clasp. He kissed her stomach, and she pushed him back, undoing the collar, and pulling it from him.

"Now do it. I want to watch." His hands flew to his throat, and he gave her a look of rebellion. She continued looking at them until he lowered them and lay back on the bed. He slicked up the toy. He was awkward with it, but it went in easily enough. His eyes half closed as he moved his his other hand, stroking himself. 

Kalique was...she kept the hardness in her eyes--for him-- but she knew her mouth was hanging open, her breath coming shallow. She hadn’t known to want this from him before. She felt herself moving in time with his strokes. She walked over to him and held up a hand for him to stop. Reached between his legs and traced around where the toy went into him, watching him try and fail not to react. 

“Kalique,” he breathed. She rubbed a thumb over his cock. Pushed him back and climbed on top of him again. He hardly breathed as she sank down on him and ground her hips against his.

“Don’t move,” she told him. She scratched his perfect skin, and rode him until she came. Not long. Lust and anger and power gave her a strong kick and as she clenched around him, she pulled him up to put her mouth on his, doing with lips and teeth what she had with her eyes earlier. He was hers, her will imposed on his. She pulled his hips to hers with her hands, giving him permission to move. He thrust into her. She freed his mouth so she could watch him come, watch him look foolish with his mouth open and eyes clenched shut. She tightened around him to wring him out, impose her will until the end, then climbed off of him as the spasms ended.

She rinsed off in the bathroom, waiting until she heard him move around before returning to the bedroom. It was a mess and full of the human smells of sex. The chamber presence sent a cleaning robot to deal with the detritus. Balem lay back on the bed, still naked, a hand flung up over his eyes. Kalique lay down next to him and pressed herself against him firmly, from toe to shoulder. 

She felt him press against her, and finally he turned to face her. He touched her face, this time with something like tenderness. 

“Tell me why, please," he said. She knew what he was asking; they could never stay far from business in their family.

“Because there is more than living forever,” she said. He looked as though he really wanted to understand. “If you really remembered Constantinople, you would remember that--remember ruling--remember making decisions that changed the world for the better. Decisions that lived on after those incarnations were only memory. Do you care about that at all, or is it only wealth and score-keeping?”

“No,” he said sadly. “I don’t care about that.”

“Then do you care that I care, that mother cared? We can lead history or we can follow it. This change is coming.”

“Because of you,” he said, with a hint of his earlier coldness.

“As you reminded me, I’m not that special. If not me, it will be someone else.” Jupiter, for one. 

“You are special, Kalique.” He moved his hand from her cheek to her bruised throat. She touched the scratches over his ribs.

“What keeps you alive then, Balem? What?” she asked.

“Winning,” he said. “I want to beat them all.” His eyes moved, glancing toward the window port, at the stars around them, where other Entitled families seeded planets, grew their harvests.

“Do this and we will,” she said. She sat up. Moved her head slightly. He beckoned over a floating console with a Regenex spray that he used on her neck, her cheek, smoothing it over with his hands. She reached out to do the same for the scratches, and he pulled her hand away. 

“Leave them,” he said. He kissed her hand, and curled it in his own, then lay back. “I’m sorry, Kalique,” he said. 

She sighed. After all that, she had not really expected to convince him. She had more power now, she could work with that. Then he continued. “I think I used to care. When I was very, very young. I think, before, and even after, the first harvest. I threw up. Mother laughed, and comforted me, and--” he cut himself off and took a shuddering breath. “I will do it for you. I will do it for the profit. For the game. Because Jupiter will not be able to keep her hands entirely clean, and I will enjoy that. Because Titus will hate it.”

He pushed his hands into the sheets, making dents in the mattress. Kalique pressed herself to him again, trying to soothe him. “I can’t. If I...cared, I would kill myself. Your hands are clean. You can make a cleaner universe.”

“Not that clean,” she said. 

“Clean enough. What do we do now?” He faced away from her now so she could wrap around him, and she did. 

“We can still go to my refinery. You should see how it’s done. Also, I owe Jupiter a bribe.”

“Will that work?” A curl of amusement in his voice.

“Give her seventy years or so. She’ll come around,” said Kalique. “There are things to be done in the meantime."


End file.
